An Overview of Oil Industry Safety Directorate

An Overview of Oil Industry Safety Directorate

OISD (Oil Industry Safety Directorate) is a technical directorate under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas that formulates and coordinates the implementation of a series of self-regulatory measures aimed at enhancing the safety in the Oil & Gas industry in India. OISD was established in 1986.

OISD, headed by an Executive Director, gets its directions and guidance from the Safety Council, the apex body on Safety in MoPNG headed by Secretary, MoPNG. 

The major objective of the Safety Council is to lay down the procedures and guidelines in the matter of design, operations and maintenance as also the creation of new assets with a view to achieve the highest safety standards in a cost-effective manner. 

Sub-Groups within OISD

For covering the entire spectrum of activities in Oil & Gas Industry, the following sub-group have been constituted in OISD:

• Exploration and production
• Process and Engineering
• Pipeline
• Marketing (POL & LPG)

Major Roles of OISD in Safety

• Competent authority to oversee implementation of the Petroleum & Natural Gas (Safety in Offshore Operations) Rules, 2008.
• Accords consent for operation to offshore fixed and mobile installations.
• Development and revision of OISD standards.
• Carrying out External Safety Audit (ESA) and Surprise Safety Audit (SSA).
• Carrying out Pre-Commissioning Safety Audit (PCSA) prior to commissioning of the new facilities/ installation.
• Carrying out Organizational level audit of oil & gas industry.
• Carrying out Incident investigation to identify root causes and suggesting recommendations to avoid recurrence of similar incident.
• Disseminating knowledge through:
  • Internal auditor training
  • Suraksha Samwad (monthly webinar)
  • Seminars & Workshops
  • Case studies
  • Safety alerts
  • Suraksha Chetna (in-house magazine of OISD)